Fellow Bookworms

Reviewing THE ORPHAN QUEEN by Jodi Meadows and HAPPY BOOK DAY TO THE MIRROR KING!!!

Happy Book Birthday, THE MIRROR KING!!!!

(AND to THE ORPHAN QUEEN in paperback!)

To celebrate, Alexa from Alexa Loves Books has put together a special surprise for Jodi! She's asked some bloggers that she knows LOVE Jodi and asked them to help put together a surprise for her big day!

I'll be posting about THE MIRROR KING's release on social media today, and decided to re-post my review of THE ORPHAN QUEEN for all of you who missed it the first time around.

Especially because the review mentions Batman! And anime! Oh yeah!!!

I really loved TOQ, and TMK is EVEN BETTER. I can't WAIT to share my thoughts on it with you next week when I'm on tour....PLUS, I got to interview Jodi!!!

(Definitely stop back ABS on April 14th!)

~*~

OPENINGLINE:

THE MIRRORS WERE an expensive superstition.Not that it mattered to Melanie. Every time we came to the western side of the city, she insisted we stop and look, and I couldn't find it in myself to deny her that pleasure."It's beautiful, isn't it?" Wind plucked at a wayward strand of her sleek, black hair. She gathered it all back and tied it with a torn bit of fabric."Sure." The city spread below us,, shimmering with knots of streetlights in the wealthy districts. Those people were important enough to warrant gas lamps at night, as though light protected like locks or swords or shields. But wealth wasn't the only thing that shone: glass panes hung on the west face of every house and tower and mansion in Skyvale, the mirrored city.Beyond the houses, factories, shops, and refugee hovels, mountains were silhouetted against the night sky. A heavy, full moon lifted."When the wraith reaches the Indigo Kingdom," I said, "all of this will be destroyed. Mirrors won't do anything to stop it."

"The best mask is a face no one will remember."

~Princess Wilhelmina, THE ORPHAN QUEEN

Would you remember the face of the most-wanted criminal in all the Indigo Kingdom? And who is a criminal? Is it the masked vigilante Black Knife, who goes around bringing in anyone with magical abilities and delivering them to the crown? Is it the vengeful Princess Wilhelmina, out to reclaim her kingdom and now leader of a ragtag group called the Ospreys? Can both be right in a world where so much is wrong, or at least put aside their differences in order to save everything they know and love?

Wilhelmina Korte is in hiding. Her parents were murdered and her kingdom was destroyed when she was young because they wouldn't join the Wraith Alliance and ban magic. Now, she's out to reclaim her throne along with the other children who escaped that tragic night. She wants revenge on the king who wrecked havoc on her world and infiltrates the Skyvale Palace as a refugee named Lady Julianna. Nobody suspects her and her friend Melanie...or do they? Wil is playing a dangerous game, especially since masked vigilante Black Knife knows more about her than he's saying...especially when it comes to the fact that deadly magic is lurking in her veins and must be hidden at all costs...

Jodi Meadows excels at creating unique, intriguing worlds and unputdownable fantasy novels. Like her debut novel INCARNATE, the first book in her new series has a slow start, but once it picks up speed, readers will be anxious to know what happens next. I love the fact that the world is shrouded in mirrors, which is such a unique, interesting concept to begin with. There's a reason for this, too, and it's dark and deadly and a perfect way to hook in readers, as is the disturbing nature of the mysterious Glowmen. There's also a REALLY CREEPY SCENE that reminds me of another REALLY CREEPY SCENE from her Newsoul trilogy. Meadows excels at REALLY CREEPY SCENES that make your skin crawl! I wish more readers read Meadows. Her first trilogy, Newsoul, wasn't marketed as fantasy and may have been overlooked due to its covers, but by the end of the series, there was no mistaking the genre. I've previously reviewed both INCARNATE and ASUNDER, and co-reviewed INFINITE with Kat. (And, slightly off-topic, but you can also see some of Jodi Meadows' fairy tale recommendations in an awesome guest post here!)

Another thing I love about Meadows is that, while romance isn't the primary focus, the romance still sweeps you away. When I read fantasy, I want so much more than just romance. If I just wanted romance, I'd read a romance novel. That isn't to say that there shouldn't be any romance ever, either. But it should take a backseat and the story shouldn't ONLY be about the couple, because that can get boring really fast. Meadows handles this well, and, in fact, THE ORPHAN queen has one of the best kissing scenes I've read in a YA book so far this year! (You guys know that Kat and I like to put a Best Kiss category into our Best of the Year Round-Up every January! Welllllll THE ORPHAN QUEEN is in a three-way tie for first place right now with THE HEART OF BETRAYAL by Mary Pearson and THE SIN EATER'S DAUGHTER by Melinda Salisbury!).

The characters remind me visually of something out of an anime or a comic, and that's not a bad thing!

For one thing, there's Black Knife. He's Batman, y'all!

No, seriously. We need to be building bat signals throughout the kingdom, not mirrors!

When he's not being Batman, he's Kaitou Sinbad, the masked thief from the Phantom Thief Jeanne (Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne) series by Arina Tanemura. Which makes Wil Kaitou Jeanne, of course!

Whenever these two have scenes together and are sleuthing around or rooftops, I was totally picturing them as Sinbad and Jeanne:

Ummmmm, especially when it came to that awesome kissing scene because THE KISSING!

It was so easy to visualize and root for the characters in this series.

If, like me, you're sick of waiting three+ years for a series to be out, you'll be glad to know that this series is a duology, which means the final book actually came out TODAY!!! Which is awesome because HOLY CLIFFHANGER! Not only that, there are ALSOfour novellas about Black Knife. THE HIDDEN PRINCE, THE GLOWING KNIGHT, THE BURNING HAND, and THE BLACK KNIFE are all out RIGHT NOW.

I'm really jealous of you new readers, actually...you don't have to wait for anything!!! You can read this amazing series in one satisfying gulp!

Other: PG ( A naked character toward the end, one male character hitting a female to bring her down because she doesn't agree with him )

~*~

COVERDESIGN:

I love the way mirrors were incorporated into this cover. They're so important in the book and rightfully belong on the cover. I can't wait to see what THE MIRROR KING will look like! Wil looks so bad-ass, too. As a fantasy lover, I'd pick this up blind to see what it was about. This is the type of "gimme" cover that the Newsoul books should have had! So intriguing!

I also love the way the O and the Q are hooking together in the title and the Q is curling out over the title. Font love!

~*~

OFFICIAL INFO:

Title: THE ORPHAN QUEEN

Author: Jodi Meadows

Release Date: March 10, 2015

Publisher: HarperTeenReceived: For Review But Also Purchased!

SUMMARY:

Wilhelmina has a hundred identities.

She is a princess.

When the Indigo Kingdom conquered her homeland, Wilhelmina and other orphaned children of nobility were taken to Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. Ten years later, they are the Ospreys, experts at stealth and theft. With them, Wilhelmina means to take back her throne.

She is a spy.

Wil and her best friend, Melanie, infiltrate Skyvale Palace to study their foes. They assume the identities of nobles from a wraith-fallen kingdom, but enemies fill the palace, and Melanie’s behavior grows suspicious. With Osprey missions becoming increasingly dangerous and their leader more unstable, Wil can’t trust anyone.

She is a threat.

Wraith is the toxic by-product of magic, and for a century using magic has been forbidden. Still the wraith pours across the continent, reshaping the land and animals into fresh horrors. Soon it will reach the Indigo Kingdom. Wilhelmina’s magic might be the key to stopping the wraith, but if the vigilante Black Knife discovers Wil’s magic, she will vanish like all the others.

Jodi Meadows introduces a vivid new fantasy full of intrigue, romance, dangerous magic, and one girl’s battle to reclaim her place in the world.

~*~

Jodi
Meadows lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her
husband, a Kippy*, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed
book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided
against becoming an astronaut. She is the author of the INCARNATE
Trilogy and the forthcoming ORPHAN QUEEN Duology
(HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen).

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